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I am a newbie and have been looking at a hammer from Kens Custom Iron. He is only selling a 1.75 lb cross peen at this time. I was thinking a 2 lb might be a nice weight. Does anyone have any experience with one of his hammers?

The best floor is one that does not make your knees sore. some do ok on concrete some do better on dirt. If someone is only forging a few days a week or once a month the floor will become even more important as the body will never have a chance to adapt with so little exposure.
I've been in old shops that the floor is thick wood planking. I was also in a shop that the floor was solidly packed clinker from the forge. Not sure how long it took to get the floor packed in.. Have also been in an old shop that the floor was indeed dirt but it looked like concrete. some will put down a layer of lime and this would harden the surface some.
My knees do best on even ground that is solid. Dirt around the forge area allows for water to be drawn in that is used for cooling the anvil, metal, etc, etc. Easy to re-level also easy to move items around as a person experiments with how they work as the old way to do it is to bury the stump into the ground 3ft or so. Also as a person moves from one type of forging into others experimenting and needing the vise to be closer or further away. (dig a hole throw the chunk of wood in and bury it) vise is now moved.
Today though it can be quite different.
With today's cheap steels and the easy of weld fabrication, there is no limit to what can be welded up, a heavy stand can be made that is both portable and solid all at the same time. Same with anvil stands or what have you.

For me, basically what Thomas said.
My primary use of these holes in the swage block is for doing the heavy hammer work forging the tenon and upsetting the body on hardy tools.
Then doing the final fitting/ shaping of the hardy tool in the hardy hole of the anvil its made for.
This solves the potential breaking of the heel problem on the anvil by doing the heavy hammering in the swage block.

Okay so please some help me.....I feel weird and creepy but it's worth it. If anyone is willing to teach my younger brother he's 37 what you know or just let him have someone to talk to I would appreciate it SO MUCH!!! I talk too much so....I will keep it short and sweet. If you have any questions I don't mind answering any questions. I just feel like the older nosy sister who has posted some ad on Pleasedateme.com for her brother. So please don't make me regrete this....

I had a number of breakthroughs today! The first one, and biggest, was that I can seive the ash from my kamado bbq and get peanut size charcoal giving me better control of airflow, fireball size and thus, each heat of the steel.
This is awesome because I've got a big ash bucket to go through! It looked like a lot of coke fires I've seen in videos, compared to my previous charcoal fires that were lumpy as and lost too much air to quickly.
The second was that my new 1kg cross pein hammer arrived yesterday so today I gave it a quick dress to smooth the sharp edges of the cross pein and flat die and got to work.
HOLY COW WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DECENT WEIGHT HAMMER MAKES! I was able to easily forge 13x8mm bar to appox 10mm square, no sweat, where previously this was a task in itself, before I could even think about forging anything from it. (I'm sure being able to take a decent heat also made a big difference here)
The third was that with decent heat I was actually able to make a half decent penny scroll.
Gimme an honest critique?
All in all, an awesome afternoon's forging where I learned exponentially more than in my last few sessions combined!
Cheers!
Jono.

Okay, so the nozzles not ideal. If you do try them, please let us know how it works, while they probably aren't perfect they may be good enough for some of the times we don't need perfect.
I have been looking a bit at glue dispensing tips, but I'm not happy with them being partly plastic with just a stainless tube. Might work, but I'm not sure I'd want plastic pieces in a burner. Cannibalizing the metal is an option, and removing the plastic.
I put the data together mostly to get a better view over it all for myself, but I thought there may be more people here that find it useful. Also, if I put it here I know where to look for it next time I need it...
Never miss an opportunity to tell people to think for themselves, too many of them don't.
Nice to see you thought this deserved a thread of its own, not just a spot in burners 101. But perhaps a topic that describe the content a little better might be suitable? Something like "Gas jet size vs mix tube diameter, actual diameters" - something along those lines, not sure how long the topic can be here.
The headline on the picture was mostly for the times the picture ends up somewhere else, without the rest of text, as a discussion topic leading to the picture something a bit more descriptive might help people know what it's about.

Which brings us to the topic "how short is too short?" (Keep your girlfriends out of this one.)
Looking at the jets in store bought small burners the orifice seems to be quite short, a couple of millimeters at the most, and often there's a filter of sorts mashed down into the mouth of the jet too so there's no laminar flow into the orifice for sure. Not a perfect design by what we have learned around here, but it seems to work.
With smaller diameters shorter orifices would seem to be acceptable, but how much is enough?

We have a friend in Oklahoma City and she emailed us saying that they were very anxious about the tornado situation. We haven't heard yet how she has fared, but are hoping for the best outcome. The disaster has made the news here in Australia. Our thoughts are with you all.

Andrew,
Thanks for the kind offer, mate. I did download the Southern Steel Supplies product catalogue. Like all the others, square bar starts at 10mm, so the stuff you mention must be old stock. That postage price seems pretty reasonable from Adelaide, so I'll have a think about that and let you know if I want some. Pity it's such a long drive. Otherwise, we could come down to visit the Birdwood Motor Museum and get some steel at the same time.
Darryl

I have done a couple of 32mm rebar snakes too, but what a pain it is drawing out the tail. Definitely power hammer country. I keep one on display near my forge all the time and sometimes visitors take a backward step.
The best one I made from 32mm was about 1200mm in length and it was stolen from an art exhibition.

What the diet is directly affects the likelihood of E. Coli contamination. It's much less prevelant in beef raised on grass versus corn. The University of Kentucky agricultural studies Dept conducted a study about this very topic.
Pnut (Mike)

As a user of old simple steel knives, green scotchbrite pads have kept mine in fighting trim, and don’t use the modern ultra fine hard stones as they won’t cut worth a dang, the blades tend to be softer than modern stainless. If you are concerned about contaminants trapped under the scales dip them in hot wax then wipe the excess off. It will penetrate the gaps and seal them with out damaging the scales.
They will have bit of a patina, and as far as home butchering goes, let’s take a page from your large animal vet who dose surgery in a sunny feild. It’s cleaner than many a surgical suit (no resistant staph living there) so a set of good knives washed with soap and rinsed in good clean water used on one cow are a lot less likely to transmit anything (especialy from a grass fed beef) than a set of power equipment at a slaughter plant that cuts up 500 steers between cleanings...

I got mine through Southern Steel Supplies. I can check with them who they buy it from but I know they had it in stock a month ago.
If all else fails I can cut some down to 1m lengths and post it up to you. A quick check with the online calculator says I can get 10m to you for about $30 - $35 and the cost of the stock is $10. Let me know if you want some.
Andrew

I agree with Frosty, break it up smaller. The coke you have there would be OK if your forge was twice the size and you could mound it up more to get more of a coke oven effect, but you would need to be working big stock to justify a fire that big.
Andrew

Personally, I'll say "Thank You", from Oklahoma. The tornado that came through the East side of Norman this week came right at my house and 1/4 of a mile away it lifted. Went right over my house and then dropped back to the ground 1/4 of a mile away. Thank God it was only an F1 level and not F3 or above. As it was, we only lost some tips of the trees in our wooded property. Prayers work.................we were praying from our storm shelter. Thanks for your prayers.......................because we are under another tornado warning tonight.

TY JHCC
Got her all plumbed in, and setting on its permanent home. Been doing some short low temp burns, after I baked the burner in the wife's oven for a few hours. Shhhhhhhh.
Going to slowly increase the temp and burn time for two more day before turn the inside a nice orange ish white.
I will post up a video of the swirl soon.
How far off the burner block should the flame be? 1/4"? 1/2"? 1" ? Looking for that sweet spot.
20190524_185226.mp4

I'll double evaporust but have no clue what it would do to the wood handles. Probably soak them up to but shy of the handle. They will need cleaned up a little more after, and beware that evaporust darkens steel the higher the carbon content.
I'd also agree to retreat the wood handles. Epoxy doesn't sound bad in my opinion and it might seal off some of the rust under the handles. Unless you plan to remake the handles or try to disassemble pre treatment then rebuild, (probably not an option on reuse).

That's for the input everyone. I'm leaning towards breaking out the slab in the forging area and seeing the dirt underneath looks like, but then probably making a pressure treated box and filling a sand/gravel mix from my neighbors pit.

Here is a picture after several minutes of run with the tapered portion of the office incandescent this is at 2 psi
When I shut it off there was a very small back fire.
I haven't built the forge(any forge-ever) yet but will continue playing with it tomorrow . I have a bunch of old AP Green fire brick so I will try it out on a brick pile set up to see how it does.
The fire brick is set into the plenum and has kaowool packed around it for testing. the tapered orfice is facing the hot side. Do you think that It would be of any benefit to flip the brick over so the taper to face the plenum. Maybe accelerate the gas flow?
Regard less I am stoked by my results!!!
Bear in mind that I have never forged anything and am greener than a Leprechaun's balls! as regards forging